The One After Tetrathlon

Haven't gotten my lazy ass to pour out my thoughts even though the last few days have been rather...uhmmm...peculiar, shall we say?
Me and Priyal got into a fight (which lasted on and off for two days, no less!) over what I thought was trivial, but she clearly was on a different wavelength :-) Well, I realised I can be rather "superficial" at times, taking things at face value, and need to look deeper into the actual cause behind the jhagdaaaa...Hope we both learn something from this...Oh my God did I say "we"?
Well anywayyy...today was Tetrathlon '08. The juniors' first event with CSI. Everything, everything that could possibly go wrong, went wrong!
Started off smoothly. No complications in the kick-off, but this treasure hunt event "Huntville" was insanely complicated worsened with all the errors made on our part. Lots of teams fighting with the co-ordinators, and rightly so, for all the mistakes on our side leading to injustice being done to the teams.
The sponsor was calm, then disturbed, then disappointed, and then downright freaked out as the day progressed! Vikas Desai, from Royal Education, had come and seemed a jolly enough fellow, and at the end of the day I can still say he is a reasonable dude. The sponsors in general have plenty expectations from the event that they are sponsoring, now Nirma doesn't really believe in making the sponsors happy. The rules are such that you are not allowed to have banners on the walls and what not...well looking at the reason its because the paint peels off, but where the fuck do we put the banners otherwise!
I have this weird tendency to look at things from both points of view, which sometimes makes me vulnerable but in many situations it has turned out to be an asset. Right now, I can still point out the mistakes, the problems that we created for ourselves. Not getting permission beforehand to put the banners in the audi(although I dont think a permission from even the director will convince that bastard Sharad Modi to allow us to do that), messing up Treasure Hunt scoring, testing the projector beforehand, and above all, not being aware of the mahaan rule of no banners even inside audi (while we we did the same thing for Colosseum '08, we had to face no probs at all!) For the record, Sharad Modi came into the audi (thankfully not when the quiz was going on, before it when ppl were just sitting waiting for their chance for mgmt case study) and himself started ripping off the banners, with the sponsor looking on. And the way he was blowing his top off, it was totally insane.
The sponsor on seeing this went ballistic. Who wouldnt??? He pointed out to us, rather sinisterly (is that a proper word?) that there will be consequences for this. Well we tried our level best to make him stay, but he wanted to just leave. And the thing that most bothers me right now is, how much of the promised 7000 will he actually give us. I am optimistically hoping for 3000, which will cover all our expenses, when we combine this amt with the registration income.
However, at the end of the day, apart from certain nitty gritties, rather frightening ones(!), we managed to successfully finish the event. When the seniors were demanding to know how the scores were evaluated, I calmly stepped in and provided a rather useful diversion by asking audience questions and keeping the folks busy. To their credit, they dint raise any further hell and were genuinely enjoying themselves.
The most important thing to be noted amidst all things blowing off today, Priyal was a rock! Totally calm, and displaying her clear-thinking abilities in the middle of crises, she handled herself and situations around her extremely well. They way she stepped in to evaluate the scoring, hearing out the participants and their rants, giving the juniors a piece of her mind when they were found to be viling away their time in the canteen while we were busting our collective asses...totally a pro. In some ways she will always be a much stronger person than I am.
I feel like I did well under the circumstances too. When these numerous CALAMITIES were happening simultaneously, I feel like I justified me being the President by facing whatever happened head on. But yeah, a major portion of todays daavs wouldnt have happened if I had somehow convinced the sponsor not to come at all to college on event day, the way Priyal said. Well hindsight is a beautiful thing, but rarely does a person does exactly the way they would have done ideally.
But you know what, we still have to inform DJ about this. He probably will freak out, but I am optimistic that he will let go our folly in putting up banners on the side walls and look at it from our point of view...too far fetched a hope I know, but thats the way I am. An eternal optimist.